Description
Latin America faces one of the largest mass migrations worldwide; by the end of 2022 more than 8 million refugees and migrants have left Venezuela, 84% of whom fled to the Latin American region. In Central America, the number of asylum-seekers and refugees travelling northwards, particularly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, grew rapidly to almost 60% since 2016, due to a combination of gang violence, poverty, and the increasing impact of droughts on farmers forced thousands. Half of the displaced are women and girls.
Regional frameworks have been important means to put migrants’ rights on the national agenda across Latin America. Yet, despite the rhetoric, these policies have not been fully implemented on the ground, and the safeguarding of the rights of migrants has profound limitations. In situations of unprecedented mass migration in the region we ask, what is the role of regional organisations in providing leadership for the protection of displaced women and girls? Specifically, how - if at all - have regional organisations developed a gender-responsive approach to migration and cooperation for migration and border governance?
The paper looks at regional governance infrastructure is complex, including organisations such as the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) and the Central American Integration System (SICA) and argues that in contexts of mass displacement, regional normative frameworks have been institutionally anaemic and implemented unevenly or seemingly arbitrarily across the region. For this reason, migration governance has failed in allocating responsibility and forms of protection as a shared responsibility for women and girls on the move. Ultimately, the paper shows a clear gap between what regional governance can do, and how policy is actually translated into national laws and practice, particularly in relation to mainstreaming gender considerations into those laws and practices. But it also offers a case for gender-responsive regional governance of migration in Latin America.
